Two Minute Warning: How Then Should We Live?: Francis Schaeffer at 100

A Christian Manifesto Francis Schaeffer

Today I am posting my second post in this series that includes over 50 modern artists that have made a splash. Last time it was Tracey Emin of England and today it is Peter Howson of Scotland. Howson has overcome alcoholism in order to continue his painting. Many times in the past great painters and writers have had their careers halted by the bottle in the past. William Faulkner, Ernest Heminingway, Scott Fitzgerald and James Joyce are all in the Woody Allen movie “Midnight in Paris” and they all were alcoholics. However, there is deliverance from alcoholism through the power of Christ.

Paul Cezanne

How Should We Then Live – Episode 8 – The Age of Fragmentation

Published on Aug 6, 2015

Francis Shaeffer

Francis Schaeffer in the episode, “The Age of Fragmentation,” Episode 8 of HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? noted:

Monet, Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Sisley, Degas were following nature as it has been called in their painting they were impressionists.They painted only what their eyes brought them. But was there reality behind the light waves reaching their eyes? After 1885 Monet carried this to its conclusion and reality tended to become a dream. With impressionism the door was open for art to become the vehicle for modern thought. As reality became a dream, impressionism began to fall apart. These men Cezanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Seurat, all great post Impressionists felt the problem, felt the loss of meaning. They set out to solve the problem, to find the way back to reality, to the absolute behind the individual things, behind the particulars, ultimately they failed.

I am not saying that these painters were always consciously painting their philosophy of life, but rather in their work as a whole their worldview was often reflected. Cezanne reduced nature to what he considered its basic geometric forms. In this he was searching for an universal which would tie all kinds of individual things in nature together, but this gave a broken fragmented appearance to his pictures.

In his bathers there is much freshness, much vitality. An absolute wonder in the balance of the picture as a whole, but he portrayed not only nature but also man himself in fragmented form. I want to stress that I am not minimizing these men as men. To read van Gogh’s letters is to weep for the pain of this sensitive man. Nor do I minimize their talent as painters. Their work often has great beauty indeed. But their art did become the vehicle of modern man’s view of fractured truth and light. As philosophy had moved from unity to fragmentation so did painting. In 1912Kaczynski wrote an article saying that in so far as the old harmony, that is an unity of knowledge have been lost, that only two possibilities remained: extreme abstraction or extreme naturalism, both he said were equal.

With this painting modern art was born. Picasso painted it in 1907 and called it Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. It unites Cezzanne’s fragmentation with Gauguin’s concept of the noble savage using the form of the African mask which was popular with Parisian art circle of that time. In great art technique is united with worldview and the technique of fragmentation works well with the worldview of modern man. A view of a fragmented world and a fragmented man and a complete break with the art of the Renaissance which was founded on man’s humanist hopes.

Here man is made to be less than man. Humanity is lost. Speaking of a part of Picasso’s private collection of his own works David Douglas Duncan says “Of course, not one of these pictures was actually a portrait, but his prophecy of a ruined world.”

I want you to understand that I am not saying that gentleness and humanness is not present in modern art, but as the techniques of modern art advanced, humanity was increasingly fragmented–as we shall see, for example, with Marcel Duchamp….The opposite of fragmentation would be unity, and the old philosophic thinkers thought they could bring forth this unity from the humanist base and then they gave this up.

The modern thinking has accepted fragmentation as a defeat really, a defeat that human mentality beginning from itself can’t bring forth an unity of thought and of life. By unity what we mean is that which would include all of thought and all of life. It can achieved if indeed God has spoken and has not been silent, and in giving us the facts that man could not find for himself, there is an unity inside of which all that marvelous diversity then man can study, has an unified place whether it is knowledge, or in values, and in life.

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Their son Paulo (Paul) was born in 1921 (and died in 1975), influencing Picasso’s imagery to turn to mother and child themes. Paul’s three children are Pablito (1949-1973), Marina (born in 1951), and Bernard (1959). Some of the Picassos in this Saper Galleries exhibition are from Marina and Bernard’s personal Picasso collection.

In 1917 ballerina Olga Khokhlova (1891-1955) met Picasso while the artist was designing the ballet “Parade” in Rome, to be performed by the Ballet Russe. They married in the Russian Orthodox church in Paris in 1918 and lived a life of conflict. She was of high society and enjoyed formal events while Picasso was more bohemian in his interests and pursuits. Their son Paulo (Paul) was born in 1921 (and died in 1975), influencing Picasso’s imagery to turn to mother and child themes. Paul’s three children are Pablito (1949-1973), Marina (born in 1951), and Bernard (1959). Some of the Picassos in this Saper Galleries exhibition are from Marina and Bernard’s personal Picasso collection.

In Confidence: Peter Howson – Artist who turned to God after struggling with autism and alcoholism

Uploaded on Aug 12, 2010

Lorna Grady meets Peter Howson, whose struggles with alcoholism and autism have led him to God in search of an inner peace. He has been described as one of the darkest and most controversial of Scottish painters and was an official war artist for the Bosnian Civil War.

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Peter Howson and Frank Mcfadden

Uploaded on May 11, 2008

a view of leading scottish painters, Peter Howson and Frank Mcfadden at The lloyd jerome gallery, music by departure lounge

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Contemporary Christian Art – The Rt Revd Lord Harries of Pentregarth

Published on Apr 10, 2012

Contrary to much opinion, the current scene of faith-related art is very much alive. There are new commissions for churches and cathedrals, a number of artists pursue their work on the basis of a deeply convinced faith, and other artists often resonate with traditional Christian themes, albeit in a highly untraditional way. The challenge for the artist, stated in the introduction to the course of lectures above, is still very much there: how to retain artistic integrity whilst doing justice to received themes.

This lecture is part of Lord Harries’ series on ‘Christian Faith and Modern Art’. The last century has seen changes in artistic style that have been both rapid and radical. This has presented a particular problem to artists who have wished to express Christian themes.

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website.http://www.gresham.ac.uk

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Artist destroys his own painting – The Madness of Peter Howson – BBC Four

The image is disturbing. Framed in close proximity in a lateral viewpoint, one is immediately struck by its vividness of colour and staccato brushwork reminiscent of Max Beckmann. As the eye focuses, the subject matter becomes increasingly apparent. It is a man hung upon a tree limb, his arms tied behind his back and his lifeless body hanging downward. A single rope has been used to tie him to the limb, traversing his chest, catching his right leg and suspending it painfully upward, while the rope continues around and holds his left arm onto a branch.

The result is a grotesque contortion of the body. The victim’s head hangs down, leading the viewer’s eye towards his torso, where it becomes apparent that his trousers have been pulled down and he has been castrated and dismembered. Above the up-raised left hand a crow is beginning to feast, and at the right and left of the victim two children gawk at the spectacle. Greens of surrounding vegetation, whites of houses in the background, and pale blues of the children’s clothes and of the sky dominate the colour scheme.

Peter Howson’s very public career as an artist began in the early 1980’s as one of the ‘New Glasgow Boys,’ a group of artists committed to bold figurative painting and strong narrative content. His work is generally labeled as social realism and throughout the eighties and early nineties Howson produced canvases filled with the human detritus of the Glasgow underclass: homeless transients, pub crawlers, footballers and fanatics, pugilists and prostitutes. The images he produced and the stories he told were always hard but rarely hopeless. Even as Howson’s own life took a downward spiral of addiction and abuse, a strange light accompanies almost all of his paintings.

A major turn-around occurred for him in the commission he received to serve as a war artist covering the Bosnian war that was then raging. In the course of two trips into the war zone between 1993 and 1994 Howson made a record of the atrocities that characterized the conflict. Many of the paintings, sketches and pastels that Howson produced are exhibited in the British Imperial War Museum. Several caused scandal and were purchased by private collectors. The experience both shattered and re-made Howson and contributed to his re-commitment to Christian faith in 2000.

Plum Grove is one of the major paintings that emerged from Howson’s time in Bosnia. It reflects several important influences on his art. Mention has been made of Beckmann, one of the German Expressionists of the early twentieth century, whose disturbing images of post-war Germany and virtuosic use of colour and intensified brushwork haunted Howson’s imagination. But another influence that profoundly shapes Howson’s entire career, more explicit now in his recent work, is that of Christ and his sufferings. Look carefully again at the painting. What image begins to emerge for you? Of what does it begin to remind you? What does it mean to insinuate this kind of image in the midst of a series on a contemporary circumstance?

Part of the spiritual power of Howson’s art is his ability to implicate Christ’s presence in the midst of human disorientation and dissolution. He once said that he found God amid ‘decadence and decay’ or, in this case, the atrocious. Can we? Or have we become so accustomed to associating the divine with the pretty and the consoling that we miss the Man of Sorrows, whose appearance was ‘marred beyond human semblance’ and from whom ‘men hide their faces’ where he manifests himself today?

Peter Howson (b. 1958) was born in London, England, but has lived in Glasgow, Scotland, for most of his life. His most recent work includes several series of the Stations of the Cross as well as a portrait of St. John Ogilvie for St Andrews Cathedral, Glasgow.

James McCullough acquired a PhD from St Andrews University in Scotland, having done his work at the Institute for Theology, Imagination and the Arts. Currently he is an adjunct faculty at Lindenwood University in St Charles, Missouri and on staff with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship (USA) at Washington University.

ArtWay Visual Meditation July 22, 2012

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Peter Howson, 1958

The Tempest

Howson was born in London but moved to Scotland at the age of 4. He began as an infantry soldier in the Scottish Fusileers but left to study at Glasgow College of Art. He has concentrated on tough, working class figures and those on the edge of society. As well as being in major galleries his work has been collected by celebrities. In 1993 he was an official war artist in Bosnia. After a long battle against abuse and addiction, as well as being diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome, he converted to Christianity in 2000, his faith now being reflected in some of his paintings. They reflect both violence as in JesusFalls for a Second Time,and compassion, as we see in Jesus meets Mary,two of his painting in a series of Stations of the Cross. Judas, 2002shows him entering into the mind of the great betrayer. Ecce Homo has something disturbing about it and Legion, referring to the man in the Gospels who had the devils expelled from him, something of his own mental fragility and torment.

Career

His work has encompassed a number of themes. His early works are typified by very masculine working class men, most famously in The Heroic Dosser (1987). Later he was commissioned by the Imperial War Museum of London, to be the official war artist for the Bosnian Civil War in 1993. Here he produced some of his most shocking and controversial work detailing the atrocities which were taking place at the time, like Plum Grove (1994). One painting in particular Croatian and Muslim, detailing a rape created controversy partly because of its explicit subject matter but also because Howson had painted it from the accounts of its victims. He was also the official war painter at the Kosovo War for the London Times.[2]

Much of his work cast stereotypes on the lower social groups; he portrayed brawls including drunken, even physically deformed men and women.

E P I S O D E 9 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode IX – The Age of Personal Peace and Affluence 27 min T h e Age of Personal Peace and Afflunce I. By the Early 1960s People Were Bombarded From Every Side by Modern Man’s Humanistic Thought II. Modern Form of Humanistic Thought Leads […]

E P I S O D E 8 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode VIII – The Age of Fragmentation 27 min I saw this film series in 1979 and it had a major impact on me. T h e Age of FRAGMENTATION I. Art As a Vehicle Of Modern Thought A. Impressionism (Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, […]

E P I S O D E 7 Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode VII – The Age of Non Reason I am thrilled to get this film series with you. I saw it first in 1979 and it had such a big impact on me. Today’s episode is where we see modern humanist man act […]

E P I S O D E 6 How Should We Then Live 6#1 Uploaded by NoMirrorHDDHrorriMoN on Oct 3, 2011 How Should We Then Live? Episode 6 of 12 ________ I am sharing with you a film series that I saw in 1979. In this film Francis Schaeffer asserted that was a shift in […]

E P I S O D E 5 How Should We Then Live? Episode 5: The Revolutionary Age I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Francis Schaeffer noted, “Reformation Did Not Bring Perfection. But gradually on basis of biblical teaching there […]

Dr. Francis Schaeffer – Episode IV – The Reformation 27 min I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer makes three key points concerning the Reformation: “1. Erasmian Christian humanism rejected by Farel. 2. Bible gives needed answers not only as to […]

Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 3 “The Renaissance” Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 3) THE RENAISSANCE I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer really shows why we have so […]

Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 2) THE MIDDLE AGES I was impacted by this film series by Francis Schaeffer back in the 1970′s and I wanted to share it with you. Schaeffer points out that during this time period unfortunately we have the “Church’s deviation from early church’s teaching in regard […]

Francis Schaeffer: “How Should We Then Live?” (Episode 1) THE ROMAN AGE Today I am starting a series that really had a big impact on my life back in the 1970′s when I first saw it. There are ten parts and today is the first. Francis Schaeffer takes a look at Rome and why […]

Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 5) TRUTH AND HISTORY Published on Oct 7, 2012 by AdamMetropolis This crucial series is narrated by the late Dr. Francis Schaeffer and former Surgeon General Dr. C. Everett Koop. Today, choices are being made that undermine human rights at their most basic level. Practices once […]

The opening song at the beginning of this episode is very insightful. Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 4) THE BASIS FOR HUMAN DIGNITY Published on Oct 7, 2012 by AdamMetropolis This crucial series is narrated by the late Dr. Francis Schaeffer and former Surgeon General Dr. C. Everett Koop. Today, choices […]

Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 3) DEATH BY SOMEONE’S CHOICE Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis This crucial series is narrated by the late Dr. Francis Schaeffer and former Surgeon General Dr. C. Everett Koop. Today, choices are being made that undermine human rights at their most basic level. Practices […]

Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” (Episode 2) SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS Published on Oct 6, 2012 by AdamMetropolis This crucial series is narrated by the late Dr. Francis Schaeffer and former Surgeon General Dr. C. Everett Koop. Today, choices are being made that undermine human rights at their most basic level. Practices […]

It is not possible to know where the pro-life evangelicals are coming from unless you look at the work of the person who inspired them the most. That person was Francis Schaeffer. I do care about economic issues but the pro-life issue is the most important to me. Several years ago Adrian Rogers (past president of […]

In his weekly opinion piece, Andy Rooney shares his views on public art. I have really enjoyed this series on the characters referenced in the film “Midnight in Paris.” I can’t express how much I have learned during this series on the characters referenced in Woody Allen’s latest movie “Midnight in Paris.” Today I am looking […]

Pablo Picasso, ‘The acrobat,’ January 18, 1930 Picasso Dreamed About Limbs by DAVE SEGAL The Acrobat (1930) is a simple, surreal cartoon, almost comical in its minimalism. It’s practically a one-line drawing that was seemingly slapdashed off in a few minutes, offering a barely feasible depiction of the body’s pliability. With utmost economy (a black […]

(UPDATE: A reader that used the username “therealchirpy” notes, “Although any affair with Picasso may be fictional, isn’t the ‘Adriana’ referred to in Allen’s ‘Midnight in Paris’ based on Hemingway’s mistress Adriana Ivancich.” I have found some evidence for that. I read a review that draws that same conclusion although some have said that Hemingway […]

Woody Allen’s film “Crimes and Misdemeanors” makes the top 100 list!!! I have written about this movie over and over and over and I have even discussed this movie on the Arkansas Times Blog. Here is a list of the top 100 most Spiritually Significant films and Woody Allen’s movie “Crimes and Misdemeanors” made the […]

A fine review of a good Woody Allen movie. Another Woman An unfairly overlooked semi-classic that improves on Allen’s Bergmanesque dramas, thanks to a formidable cast that includes Gena Rowlands. 2011-09-12 Woody Allen Trevor Gilks 1988 Another Woman, like September, looks like an inessential Woody Allen film. It is yet another unpopular, moderately reviewed movie […]

I enjoyed this review from the 1970′s of Woody Allen movies from John Dart. Woody Allen, Theologian by John Dart Formerly religion religion writer for the Los Angeles Times, John Dart is news editor of the Christian Century magazine. This article appeared in the Christian Century June 22-29, 1977, p. 585. Copyright by the Christian […]

A review of the movie “Whatever Works” by an Evangelical. Woody Allen’s nihilist liberalism goes activist Echoing a remark by Malcolm Muggeridge, Mark Richardson at Oz Conservative writes that liberalism is the last surviving extreme ideology, and he gives several example of what he means by this extremism. I added to the thread my own […]

A very interesting review. Eileen A. Joy Southern Illinois University Edwardsville Dept. of English Language and Literature ejoy@siue.edu College of Arts & Sciences Spring Colloquium “Thinking About the University” 9 – 11 April, 2007 Session 2 (Friday, Apr. 11): Staring Back in the Mirror: Professors Consider Their Depiction in Literature and Film “You Must Change […]